Do I Always Have to Do it Myself?

Maybe I’m starting a series called “These Are a Few of My Favorite Tools.”  Today’s tool is:

“Gathering Evidence for a New Conclusion.” Author Maria Nemeth introduced this tool to me as part of her life-changing course “Mastering Life’s Energies” through the Academy for Coaching Excellence, based right here in Sacramento, California.

I call Nemeth’s tool “the thinking woman’s affirmation.” You see, even though I’m trained in a teaching that LOVES its affirmations, I confess to never consistently using or consciously benefiting from them. If I am sick and tired and affirm “I am well. I am energetic,” it never feels true (by definition it is the opposite of how I feel).

Instead of confronting the apparent reality head-on, Nemeth invites us to create a “new reality,” in two parts. First, by acknowledging and uncovering the conclusions (wrong-headed affirmations) that we already have about our lives. One of mine was “I always have to do it myself.”

Maria helped me see that I had already gathered mountains of evidence to support this conclusion. She suggested there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve got figurative file cabinets full of examples where people let me down on various projects. That evidence is not going anywhere and it’s perfectly available to me anytime I’d like to revisit it.

“However, would it be interesting to you,” she asked. “to gather evidence for a new conclusion?”

I said, “Sure,” with trepidation. (it can be painful, can’t it, to keep being proven right).

So she had me create a new conclusion to gather evidence for, “I can partner with others.” As I’ve used this tool over time, I’ve come to see the project of gathering evidence to support a new conclusion sort of like I’m a private detective and I have a new client with a new mission. My old client paid me with bad feelings to gather evidence for the conclusion “I always have to do it myself.”  My new client is paying me with good feelings to gather evidence for this new conclusion. When it’s a client and a project rather than an affirmation, I can just put my mind to work looking for what evidence I can gather to bolster this proposition.

As the arrows on the charts show, the mere creation of a conclusion leads to the gathering of evidence to support it. And the gathering of evidence to support it affects how I show up in the world, which leads others to see me a certain way, which further bolsters the conclusion. As you can see in the Old Conclusions Flow Chart, when I just work with that old conclusion, I am constantly using my big brain to gather and create more evidence of what I think I already know.

But as the New Conclusions Flow Chart shows, when I put my mind to finding evidence that I can effectively partner with other people, I start actually behaving differently towards others. I start showing up like a person who might trust someone else to do what they say they will. And then that person starts actually doing what they say they will. And then that in turn gives me evidence that my completely made-up conclusion is actually true!

I’d invite you to give this a chance. What’s some way that you’re experiencing the world that isn’t working for you? What other conclusion are you willing to gather evidence for?

If you try this, please drop me a line and let me know how it works–that’s, as Maria Nemeth would say, “just the best!”